Introduction
TF2 is quite different the player’s choice for characters are limited to six that are all male. The characters are pyro, medic, spy, demo, sniper, and heavy. Each of them have their own abilities. The player can choose which game he would like to join, once joining one must pick a side red or blue. While in the game, the player can change characters upon death.
Each community is made up of players that either pay to play for WoW, while TF2 is free to play. Each game has its own players that show their power within these social communities. The players in power will show their knowledge and skill within these communities using language, such as with the use of codes, profanity, and emojis. The players will use these features in game according the set rules of the community and use them to show their dominance over new players (newbs). The players must understand the social community and be involved much like, “Ducheneaut provides compelling evidence of how norms can be socially created and interactionally enforced on individual players in mmogs. There are, then, myriad ways of playing a game- etiquette, styles, gestures that distance oneself from the activities or draw oneself nearer to it, enactments of stocisim, degree of participation in the lingo of the game, willingness to trash talk and to do so on appropriate occasions- that express the extent of one’s commitment to the game and the extent of one’s belongingness in a gaming community” (Khanolkar and McLean). In using these features the players in power will either help or call out other players to show that they are more knowledgeable about the game. WoW has multiple chats that players can use to communicate with each other. For example, the first chat is the general chat for everyone on the player’s specific server, then there are chats dedicated just for players within a guild, and there are also chats for in-group when raiding and doing dungeons with other players in the group.
Team Fortress 2 only has one chat for a player during each game they play. This chat is for both the red and blue team. Players in TF2 Within each community there are rules that govern the way players interact with each other. These rules are applied to the whole community and the players can be punished for breaking the rules set in place. Some of these rules come from the game producers themselves, for example no profanity. But with this example there are ways to express your anger in chat without spelling out curse words, like using symbols to represent letters (@#$%), some players will add letters in specific places while using symbols to express their anger in the moment. Some other common rules are spamming, for example in WoW players can communicate about gear, characters, and equipment in some of the chat forums in the game some players can spam the chat feed with misinformation about the game itself. Some other gamers will spam the chat feed with upcoming guild events or LF(looking for) is one that is constantly used over time and again to try and get more players to join in their raid or guild. Spamming this way is annoying to players trying to communicate with others, if a player wants to they can report them to WoW, where a representative will then consider the specific gamer and decide whether that person should be punished.
Team Fortress 2 also has rules about profanity and spamming. But because this game is free to play, players are more rebellious to follow standard social rules that many other players accept as the norm. Profanity much like WoW, some characters will follow the rule and use symbols to express their anger, but there will always be someone willing to go beyond and type the whole word without considering the consequences and if there are any such punishment. Spamming is a constant in TF2, with certain commands setup as hot keys (Spy and Medic) seems like an encouragement to spam these keys repeatedly.
Each of these communities display these features to show their social knowledge about the game and reacting to the social norms set forth in each community. Due to the game play in these virtual world communication do follow some of Grice Maxims “rules” of conversation but definitely not all. These communities decide what is appropriate and when it is appropriate in order to show one's willingness to be a part of the community and to show power over others.
